Luxury goods fascinate the hell outta me. The companies don’t usually pay their employees that well (according to my inside sources), sometimes they produce their items in sweatshops, they create a lifestyle type product that is well, expensive for the hell of it…just because. But for some reason the massed still want a peice. Now this is where the whole thing gets interesting, usually their target market is wealthy, white folks (just look at the adds, white peeps in yachts and crap, like the real live Dynasty).

Some how or another it ends up getting appropriated into ‘urban’ culture and remixed. For example look at the Gucci track suit adorned by LL Cool J in the 80s. Stay with me, this is where it gets juicy, Gucci came out with the all over monogram track suit after it was made popular by the hip hop community. So that means that the originals were phony. Well, whadya know, luxury goods being inspired by knock offs.

I subscribe to WWD and they constantly run columns on cracking down on counterfeits. Louis Vuitton is so hard core about it that they have a task force dedicated to shaking down producers of goods that may infringe on their copyright licenses. For the sake of parties involved I won’t be mentioning names but at one place I did art direction for LV issued a cease and desist letter due to a scarf and hat that Gorrin Bros put out. Any hoot, I thought it was wild that tonight, outside the BK museum, “Vuitton is setting up 10 New York-style street vendors — not to sell fakes, but rather authentic Louis Vuitton product and special Monogramouflage canvases that Murakami has created specifically for the exhibition” quoted from wwd.com